THUD TAG-TEAM REVIEW: BOARDWALK EMPIRE - "THE EMERALD CITY"

Great write-up, guys. However, framing & dismissing Van Alden's self-flagellation with a DaVinci Code/Opus-Dei reference makes you come off as thick. Dude's a hardline Catholic to whom the decree "Every Sperm Is Sacred" is an unbreachable law of God. Sure, the idea that Van Alden might actually get off this way anyway is a bit obvious, it does serve to add another level of creepiness to the character.

I know and have let a lot of hardline Catholics in my day, and while they might believe every sperm and every cell is sacred, they don't whip themselves bloody. As a general rule, self-flagellation died out in the Middle Ages.

Actually, I'm not even sure he's Catholic. We haven't seen him with a rosary, which is something I would expect to see him fingering and flagellating with. His ranting about his wife's surgery made me think he might be one of the stricter Protestant sects, Southern Baptist or something like that. Catholics, with their belief to go forth and really multiply, usually embrace medical intervention to help that along. A lot of Protestant sects are more fervent in their beliefs of predestination and omniscience than Catholics.

For the record, I didn't make a DaVinci Code reference. I referred to Opus Dei which existed longer than Dan Brown's awful series. Forgive me for using shorthand to refer to the only large religious organization who still believes in mortification of the flesh. Not even hardline Catholics go along with them, so I was merely using it as a "This guy is out of the ordinary" label.

But it's always nice to be dismissed as stupid for one quick word choice. Really. Snap judgments based on something I literally write as I'm writing two other pieces or walking a dog is far more intelligent, certainly.

I'm not really sure I see how her usage of referential shorthand in this context makes her thick. You don't really explain your reasoning, Art Decade - I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you can't possibly think Rappe wasn't aware of anything you just said about Van Alden.

Here usage of the referential shorthand was itself a critique. Or are you objecting to the usage of referential shorthand itself?

You wrote it while you were walking the dog? What? I'm so confused.

Calling you "thick" was unnecessary, but the boards certainly have thrown icier snowballs at main page writers (RIP Phil Owen). Whether you were walking the dog or flagellating yourself or taking a shit while you wrote your review doesn't enter into it. You put words out there and people will have opinions, and won't care about the circumstances in which you wrote them. and I don't think they should.

I'm only saying this because I have genuinely enjoyed the output of both Ms. Rappe and The Other Joshua Miller: You guys need to make a decision as site contributors to not take it personally anytime someone disagrees or challenges what you said or how you said it. Don't succumb to a martyr mentality. For example, I'm having a nice civil disagreement with that new J David Rhodes feller what wrote the V: Season One review over in that thread. It can happen! You three are the future! You CAN pilot your own destiny! Keep up the good work, youngsters.

I'm with ya Phil. I am the future! I'm with ya on the other thing too.

But I am also a big fan of getting people to re-explain comments they dashed off with little thought. That's all I'm doing here... and would still like to hear what Art Decade has to say. Just trying to make the world a sexier place.

Exactly, that's my point. Van Alden's adopted a Middle Age practice into his sexual life. I suppose I was just overly-annoyed that this character nuance could be done away with a bloody DaVinci Code referrence (even though that was in no way your intent).

Yeah, apologies, Ms Rappe. "Thick" was a poor & hyperbolic word choice. In fact, your write-up was so solid (as they always are), I assumed my quibble of criticism was little more than a pebble toss at a brick wall.

...and the world just became sexier.

The problem is that Dan Brown is Opus Dei's cultural cache now. I got what Rappe was saying, although I disagree with it*, but I can understand why someone might make the connection.

*My own personal theory about Van Alden is that he probably belongs to a nice, conservative, church and he's just autodidactically taught himself these weird behaviour patterns. There's too much sneering at authority for him to really belong to one of the heavier churches.

I'm not succumbing to a martyr mentality. I thought I'd defend and clarify myself a bit. Calling me "thick" isn't disagreeing with my opinion, it's snarking at me for a poor word choice and disregarding anything else I might say about the character or the show.

I'm not asking them to care about the circumstances -- but I do think people need to have some awareness as to when these are written, and how. If I had three days to pour over a Boardwalk Empire review, I may have described Van Alden differently.

We online writers are asked to generate a massive amount of content very quickly. Sometimes things aren't said as succinctly as I want them to be. But I constantly hope that some silly detail like that won't overshadow the whole of something I've written. Here, I felt like it did, so I felt the need to defend myself.

I've been at this awhile, Phil, if not on CHUD proper. I've received LOTS of rude messages in a variety of formats, and my skin is pretty thick. Did I go through the comments on the Wuthering Heights piece and attack everyone
who bitched about that appearing on CHUD? Nope. Laughed it off. I laugh 99% of it off, and people have said some truly horrendous things to me in the course of my career.

My brain, however, is not thick. And one thing that I will always call people out on is a kneejerk assumption that two words are indicative of my intelligence as a whole. I loathe that, and it's one of the laziest things Internet readers do. "You said this, so you must be stupid." No, I'm NOT stupid. And if you want to debate something, let's debate it. But nothing entertaining, useful, or interesting comes from "This makes you stupid."

I can't speak for Joshua, but that's why I said something, and will continue to do so to such responses for as long as I write here. One of the things I appreciate in the CHUD forums (and that differentiates from the comments) is that people generally respond to our work in a thoughtful manner. Even if it's not positive and praising, it's a response worth reading, and I like to do my part to encourage and engage with that.

But if you're just going to come in and say "you're stupid" well, then I'm going to call you out on it. Plain and simple. I apologize if it came off harsh, but I don't appreciate being reduced that way. I don't like being lectured, either, but I appreciate that we appeared to have a gang bang going on and you feel the need to call us out just as readily.

Thanks, Art, and I'm sorry if I reacted poorly. The funny thing is, I think I even described him simply as "self-flagellating" when that quirk was introduced, someone said "Opus Dei" and it stuck in my brain in a pretty pathetic way.

It was a dumb way to describe him -- but then I still think it's a pretty awkward character trait, and my annoyance with it probably makes me flippant!

But I think it's meant to be an awkward character trait. Everything about Van Alden is kind of askew and messy and it fits the character to have these weird idiosyncracies. Usually characters with those sort of quirks are heightened in some way. They're domineering, or villainous, or good at what they do and as such there's a tension between someone whose skills we're supposed to be impressed by and his blind devotion to a cause exemplified by the flagellation.

However with Van Alden because there's nothing discernably notable to it, it just comes across almost as kink. We're so used to the idea of self flagellation as something which people get a kick out of, that it's hard to imagine a situation where someone does it because they feel it's the moral thing to do, despite the pain.

Oh, I know and agree. Van Alden is still such an enigma that it's hard to reconcile it with anything else about him. Nucky has been laid pretty bare for us (oh, his entire life is based on trying to get his father's approval!) that it's difficult to see where Van Alden is coming from at all. Part of that is the fun, of course, especially as he's rapidly unraveling.

On the other hand, jumping from a photo of Margaret to a pretty filthy sex scene makes it all seem even more awkward. This guy has major scar tissue. This is his "safety net" for every dirty feeling, so how the hell did he let it all go?

I'm curious to find out. I'm just wondering if it will be one of those little details they introduced to underline "this guy is sick!!" and we just never get a satisfying mention/explanation/resolution for it. Not that I think every trait has to have one, but it's been a mark of the show to expose and explain all of the dirty laundry. I'm going to be disappointed if I saw Nucky's childhood treasures up in flames, but Van Alden's religious bents retreat into "stuff we saw in the first season."

I think they've laid bare Nucky so that he can be a stable dynamic. Nucky's story is very of the present. He's a changeable force, someone who reacts to the people around him and we only need a cursory understanding of his backstory to appreciate that.

However having Nucky defined allows longer development of characters like Van Alden and Jimmy who seem to have the potential to be pretty one dimensional, but could reveal countless intrigues as the series progresses. But like I said if you've got a cast who are deliberately ambigious in their motivations and histories (and everyone from Margaret to Chalky is this at the moment) then you need a stable anchor, and Nucky is that anchor.

I think a similar thing kind of happened with The Sopranos where Tony, despite the apparent growth therapy sequences, was an inert character, but that allowed the rest of the cast to flourish in their roles with Tony as the bedrock.

My problem with Van Alden's self-flagellation was that it struck me as easy - an easy way for HBO to be "edgy" or titillating. I felt the same way with Angela's lesbianism. I get the choice to make Van Alden a righteous man, to better set him at odds with Nucky, but it felt uninspired to me to push his religiousness into the freak territory. Part of the problem I'm sure was that I felt Van Alden wasn't really gelling as a character at the time. So in a way that served to actually make him even less interesting to me. I think my problem with the flagellation speaks more to a problem with Van Alden that the inclusion of the act itself. If that makes sense. For me it seems like a cheap way to define a floundering character.

Considering EVERY SCENE THAT PAZ LA HUERTA IS IN I'm unsure as to why you would define Self-Flagellation as an attempt at being edgy. Self-Flagellation is something which seems to be fairly 'common' in media, at least common enough me for me to be able to define it as a trope. I do think the writers don't have an angle on Van Alden and that the scene could have been 'whatever sticks to the wall' sort of deal, but to me it sort of helps build up this picture of a character who is literally a wreck and is utterly unguided.

Beautifully said. I almost felt that Van Alden is a walking metaphor for Prohibition itself: Strict morality, instigated with the best intentions, that succeeds to do little more than warp & corrupt civility &, in Boardwalk Empire's case, bring about lots & lots of street crime (I'm also looking at you, US War On Drugs).

Exactly. I think it is common too. That's what I meant by "easy."

Paz's constant nudity is most certainly an attempt at being edgy. But it isn't story related. It's just skin. Maybe it's weird to draw a line between the two, but it seems fairly distinct to me.

Edgy or not, its HBO's job to figure out how to keep viewers watching to justify an expensive show. "Tits galore" is a helluva cost effective way to sweeten the pot every week. And can you imagine what a massive cop-out it would be if they didn't show rampant, near-pornographic nudity? It's HBO for Pete's sake!

I'm going to add the caveat that I'm giddily in love with the show and as such it's most likely that I'm willfully ignoring faults.

It seems to me that Boardwalk Empire is either a show that was designed to be constantly in transition (for example Nucky is ostensibly the lead of the show, but it doesn't feel like he gets much more screentime than anyone else) or diverted from an established plan at a late stage, because it feels likes the writers are almost feeling around the story to try and work out what is worth keeping and what isn't. I have a feeling that Boardwalk Empire Season 2 will probably be a somewhat different, and more assured, beast than the first Season.

Hey. I wasn't complaining about the tits, my friend.

THAT was a lecture? Didn't mean for it to be. And I get that this is a "quickie" review, but unless you want a boutique readership, your circumstances won't really matter to the reader. You can't force a cult of personality. The work has to speak for itself. I dunno, I'm not explaining myself well today. I still wanna know how you wrote a review while walking the dog, though. And Art Decade's a good poster, so I'm glad everyone is in love again.

Disagree with any notion that Van Alden is somehow crossing over to infiltrate anything; he's simply the old "the man who would not bend, simply broke" cliche. Nothing we haven't seen before, but the pleasure in watching here is due to the singer, not the song. We've been waiting all season for Michael Shannon's moment, and we got it last Sunday.

Yeah, that final scene with Van Alden (where he briefly gives into that primal side of himself that he's constantly at war with, and almost immediately shrinks away from it) seems to indicate a despairing loss rather than a game plan. Van Alden's a blunt instrument, I wouldn't expect him to be resourceful enough to worm his way into the organisation.

I think we can all agree that Michael Shannon is wonderful.

Yes, I'm forcing a cult of personality. Jesus, Phil. These two posts of yours combined are more belittling to me and my work than anything Deco said. Thanks.

My body of work (which extends beyond CHUD) speaks just fine for itself. But apparently a message board post speaks much, much louder and completely paints me as a snot nosed rookie who needs to be taken to task not once, but twice. Deco and I both made poor word choices, and apologized for them. We explained ourselves. We're cool, I think. And yet this.

I'm walking away now. There's nothing else I can say, except that I would certainly hope I've betrayed more brain and skill here than this would indicate. I'd like to be judged for THAT, not some silly post here I made in a fit of pique, which seems to be exactly what's happening.

Oh yes ... and the way I've written reviews while walking a dog or sitting in a car is called an "iphone." There. Your question is answered.

Holy shit.

Fuck it, I'll keep trying - I never insinuated you were a snot-nosed rookie, and I apologize if you took it that way. I'd been noticing the site leaning toward a defensive, "you people don't know what we go through for you" phase, felt there was a glimpse of that in your response to Art Decade, and thought I'd pre-emptively mention something to the effect of, "hey, site, you're better than that. Don't freak out about nitpicky criticisms, focus on the job at hand. Worry about the content." I'm sorry it came out as underthgought (and seemingly aimed exclusively at you) as it seems to have. I was just half-assing it. I can't even blame it on the dog.

Irony is so, like, ironic.

And I'm sorry if we, as a group, seem to be coming off as defensive. I'm sorry to be defensive.

It's been a tough time around here. We're getting it from a lot of sides since Devin's departure, so I imagine we're more thin-skinned than usual. We're working overtime, and sometimes it feels like a lot of people still aren't happy. I've seen some of the shit said about "the new CHUD" off-site, and you just have to wonder why you bother.

That said, you guys have been amazingly supportive and positive, and we really appreciate it. I'm really glad to be working with such a friendly team, and for such an enthusiastic bunch. It's been really weird to come in here and seeing people actually agree with something I've written, or praise it, because I'm really, really not used to it.

So, I shouldn't snap when someone does say [x] because it's the minority of what we have here. The forum has been a fun place for me!

But I always feel like everyone should have some perspective -- I know, because I read these sites before I ever worked for them -- that it seems like a jolly work day, so shut the fuck up. But we're humans, and so we occasionally get sloppy, tired, or cranky and sometimes I feel compelled to point it out. To me, the appeal of this medium is that ability to go "Yeah, I fucked it up -- but I was really tired when I wrote it!" and not sit on a pedestal pretending to be more awesome and perfect than the readers.

But maybe I'm going at it all wrong, and I'm supposed to preach down because I'm up there. I don't know.

Anyway, forget it, and let's just hug it out.

*lingers a little too long on the platonic hug, makes it weird*

Awww.

*Realizes he's been hugging Joshua's leg the whole time*

Awww indeed. I really need to catch up on this series. I think a long work weekend made me miss one, and then I got behind. I might be 3 episodes behind. Promise to get caught up on this long weekend.

This thread made me cringe a bit, but now my heart is settled.